


The Beast Must Die

by SeaOfBones



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Mentioned Black Eagles Students (Fire Emblem), Mentioned Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem), Operas, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), accidentally making a special hell for felix by not recruiting anyone else from BL, bittersweet romance, but it's the one i got and i'm now obsessed with it, complicated fraldariydd angst, felix/dorothea was not the paired ending i was aiming for, springtime for edelgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 18:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBones/pseuds/SeaOfBones
Summary: Felix watches Dorothea perform in a propaganda opera based on Edelgard's life, and feels guilty about his role in Dimitri's death.





	The Beast Must Die

The Dimitri that gnashed and stomped across the stage was the one from Felix's nightmares. Screaming, frothing, monstrous. Red ribbons and a puff of scarlet powder burst from his chest as Dorothea's green-eyed Edelgard struck the killing blow. The false Dimitri fell back on to his ragged cloak, which he'd torn off and thrown to the ground before the climatic fight.

_It's a metaphor,_ Dorothea had explained the last time he'd visited, as they lay together in her perfumed dressing room. _He’s discarding the facade of nobility._

Felix didn't really get it. This was all Ferdinand whatever-his-name-was’s idea, apparently. Making art of Emperor Edelgard’s victories and hardships, to help the people understand why the past five years had happened. A tidy version of history that made a pretty tale, one that nobody alive would lose sleep over. Felix had eventually conceded that whether or not Dimitri was still wearing his cloak when Edelgard killed him didn't make a difference to the story.

_Besides, the fight choreography is easier to follow without the cloak covering his arms,_ Dorothea had added. _That's why you can make it out from all the way at the back, see?_

Felix didn’t hide that he thought the swordplay of the man playing Dimitri wasn't worth watching. He'd said it to his face the last time he’d visited, actually.

On the stage, Dimitri's final animal howl fell away, and the chaotic drumbeat faded, the one Felix had eventually realised played when Dimitri was supposed to be going mad. The violins that went with Edelgard’s heroic speeches rose, and Dorothea delivered the opera’s final song. A funeral dirge, soft and sad, lamenting the tragic necessity of war. Felix liked to hear her voice, but this was hard to watch. Living and dead alike leapt back on to the stage for the curtain call. Dimitri and Edelgard took a deep bow together, as if they'd made peace, and smiled brightly at the audience.

Felix stood as the crowd began to applaud. Waited long enough for Dorothea's searching eyes to find him before he slipped out of the auditorium. Dorothea liked to laugh about the first time he'd come, when he'd startled one of the opera's regular patrons by getting annoyed and asking how long everyone was going to keep clapping for during the second or third encore of whooping and cheering.

_It's polite,_ she'd laughed, _like thanking your opponent after a duel._

Felix had stretched out across the bed. _I thought Edelgard wanted to stop all that crap. Crests and nobles and saying things you don't mean._ Dorothea had found that particularly funny, for some reason.

That was the time he'd stayed for a few weeks, because he'd injured his shoulder. _I thought I was supposed to be the one looking after you,_ he'd grumbled, as he let her change his bandages. As he let her buy him dinner, and a new wristguard.

Dorothea was still taking her final bow when Felix arrived backstage. From the way Dimitri's actor glared, Felix's comments about his performance were clearly still a sore point. Felix had once offered to show him how to actually hold a sword properly, but it hadn't gone down well. Dorothea had teased that Felix should retire from being a mercenary and work with the company, but they both knew he didn’t like _other people_ enough for the job.

Felix lingered at the back of the room as Dorothea came offstage. It was always strange seeing her up close like this, dressed as Edelgard. She smiled, laid her prop axe against the wall, and took the bouquets she was handed. Felix didn’t know how she could stand to be surrounded by sycophants like this, after everything she’d told him about how she’d been treated before. You couldn’t have paid him to play nice like she did every night.

But people still lived on the streets under Edelgard’s rule, and Felix knew Dorothea didn’t want to go back.

Hubert and Byleth had disappeared into the darkness, and Lord Arundel had gone missing not long after, leaving Ferdinand as Edelgard's closest advisor. So for now, that meant funding for the opera, and the street kids Dorothea was always finding roles for. Felix didn't trust that things couldn't get worse again, if they changed. If there was another war, another coup. If Edelgard's reign went the way he'd feared Dimitri's would, if whatever their old teacher had gone looking for came back to swallow Fódlan whole.

It took a while for Dorothea to make her way across the room, with all the thanking people and sending them on their way she had to do. The rooms behind the scenes were stark and bare compared to the cushioned auditorium, the creaky wooden floors cluttered with stage rigging.

“Can I carry some of that for you?” Felix said stiffly, eyes flicking to the ridiculous collection of flowers Dorothea was barely wrapping her arms around.

“So you’re not going to tell me whether you liked the show tonight?” Dorothea purred, her voice taking that soft tone she used after she’d been singing when she was trying not to pull something in her throat.

“Of course I liked it,” Felix replied gruffly, leaning forward to take the flowers she held out to him. “I wouldn’t come back if I didn’t.”

Dorothea kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You’re sweet, Felix.”

“If you say so,” he frowned. “I just like listening to you sing. I definitely don’t come back for the rest of the company. Your Dimitri was awful again tonight.”

Dorothea’s laughter tinkled like a windchime as she walked towards her dressing room, one red-gloved hand picking at the knot in her corset strings. “What did he do this time?”

Felix went quiet as she unlocked the door. “His accent is still terrible,” he said, half-heartedly.

Dorothea coaxed him inside and lifted his chin gently. Her fingers were chalky with dried fake blood, and Edelgard’s crown glimmered on her head. He wondered, was that the last thing Dimitri saw, or was it the dirt?

“Take that thing off,” Felix snapped, storming towards her dresser to set down the flowers.

Dorothea came up behind him slowly and sat against the dresser. Pulling the red gloves off, one finger at a time.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered, hands shaking. “It’s just—"

“It’s just, every time you come to see me, you have to watch him die again,” Dorothea said sadly, as she pulled Edelgard’s crown from her head. “I know.”

Felix swallowed, and nodded very slightly. Watched as she settled the wig on the mannequin head by the mirror.

“How do you do it, Thea?” he said lowly, eyes catching on the figurine’s blank face. “How do you relive this every night?”

Dorothea sighed gently, restless fingers pulling handfuls of hairpins from her thick hair and scattering them across the dresser. “I could ask you the same,” she said, watery green eyes staring out across the room. “How can you go back out there and fight, after everything that happened?”

Felix pressed his thin lips together. He didn't have a good answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. He hadn’t been Felix Hugo Fraldarius for a long time, was one answer. Just Felix, the sellsword. “I guess it’s what I do now.”

“She would have made you an army captain, if it’s because of money,” Dorothea said. Edelgard, she meant. More pins scattered to the dresser. They’d had this argument before.

“I don’t want to be somebody’s knight,” Felix replied sullenly. “Is this what _you_ want, to be Edelgard’s mouth?”

Dorothea shrugged, and forced a laugh. “I guess it’s what I do now.”

Felix didn’t know what to say to fix this, so he took her hand. She held it back, tightly.

The thing that upset Felix, watching the fake, was that Dimitri hadn't looked like his nightmares when they met on the Tailtean Plains. He'd been ruthless, but no more ruthless than Edelgard. He hadn't yelled, or bared his teeth, or rended his clothes. He'd been cold, but filled with sorrow. And Felix, one of the hundreds of killers-for-hire still wandering the Empire after the war, was the monster, the one still soaked in strangers’ blood.

Felix led Dorothea to the bed and held her, soft and warm, against the slippery pink sheets. He was always worst at talking. His hands said what his mouth could not. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Glenn, Rodrigue, Sylvain, Ingrid, Dimitri. Everyone else he'd ever cared about had died. Most of them by his hand, in the end. One day, he’d go out to fight and wouldn’t come back, and maybe that would be payment enough for what he’d done. Until then, though. Until then, he’d come back, and back, and back.


End file.
